As always, if you have any questions or would like more information, please leave a comment or contact me.

Looking back at the First Quarter Market report:

And the surrounding regions …

2411. The number of properties currently on the market right now.

317. The number of properties that have sold through the MLS in Central Virginia.

36. The number of these properties that are marked as having been foreclosures.

529. The number of properties that went under contract in the first quarter.

The first quarter is over; thank goodness.

And today*:

2707. The number of properties on the market right now.

737. The number of properties that have sold so far this year.

72. The number of properties sold so far this year market as foreclosures.

1198. The number of properties that have gone under contract so far this year.

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First things first – temporarily, I am ignoring aggregate days on market numbers. I do not trust them, and will go into more detail in a future post. Suffice it to say, there are enough outliers and inaccuracies to force me to say publicly that the numbers are not accurate. The only way to get a true representation of days on market in the Charlottesville area is to run the numbers individually, say, for a market analysis.

Here is a quick example why I do not trust the days on market numbers:

Of the 204 properties that have "contract dates" of at least 1 April 2009, 55 have Days on Market number of zero. Think that might skew the aggregate numbers? About 99% of these 55 "outliers" are new construction …  all that being said, we can gain insight by running numbers manually.

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Looking at the numbers a bit differently,

556 properties in the Charlottesville MLS (that were not marked as being new construction) went under contract since April 1 2009.

148 – about 27%  – have continuous days on market of less than 30 days.

231 – about 42% – have CDOM of less than 60 days

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Anecdotally – properties are selling. Buyers are buying, sellers are selling.  Some properties are selling in three, five and ten days … some even with multiple offers.

The $8,000 tax credit (h/t TPREG)is absolutely on the minds of first-time homebuyers. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s free "money" from the government! (and no, I’m not seeing sellers price their homes $8k more because of the credit – most sellers just want to sell and aren’t concerned with capturing that $8k.  Some sellers are holding off because they cannot get the prices they need because they are under water – either principle or principle plus the HELOC – and some because they are getting good advice.

Buyers are noticing that well-priced properties are selling. When houses reach a certain price point, they will sell. Try it yourself – search for homes for sale in Charlottesville or Albemarle by price reduction and you will see that things are moving.

But … some buyers are holding off because they aren’t going to be here for more than at least three to five years, they are concerned about the possible (and likely) continued decline in housing prices,

Interest rates have been rising, but they are not "high" by historical standards. Dan Green thinks that "rates will decrease over the next 30 days." (thanks for the chart, Wolfram Alpha)

Please do not pay attention to the "average DOM" or the "% diff list/sell" – they just aren’t accurate. Neither take into account properties that have been listed and re-listed (and sometime re-re-listed). Frequently the actual days on market and differential between original list price and ultimate selling price are wildly disparate.

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A quick agent update: By this time in:

2005 – 81 agents had more than 10 sides and 238 had more than 5

2006 – 71 agents had more than 10 sides and 218 had more than 5

2007 – 52 agents had more than 10 sides and 181 had more than 5

2008 – 33 agents had more than 10 sides and 138 had more than 5

2009 – 24 agents had more than 10 sides and 84 had more than 5

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Update 17 June 2009:

At Buyer’s request in the comments:

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Price range statistics report.

More about Days on Market and Inventory levels.

*Right now is Sunday night, 14 June 2009

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Caveats:

1 – Central Virginia, for the purposes of this report, is Charlottesville, Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna, Louisa and Nelson

2 – This is a smaller number – likely significantly smaller – than the actual number of foreclosures in our market.

3 – There is no reliable way to determine the number of short sales in our market, as there is not yet a consistent and reliable method to track foreclosures.

4 – I’m sorry for the brevity of this post; I’m still working on a few things to make my reports deeper and more robust.

Tags: charlottesville, albemarle, real estate market, real estate data, market statistics, inventory, days on market